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Date
Tantalum. Samarium. Gadolinium. Lanthanum. Neodymium. Erbium. Europium.
Neverheardovum? At least, we bet that many of you have never head of them.
And yet, you probably have some of these “rare earth” metals in your pocket, pocketbook, and definitely your home. Smartphones, rechargeable batteries, gaming devices, fiber optics, headsets… they all rely on the properties of these metals. I couldn’t be typing this, and you couldn’t be reading it (at least these days) without these rare earth metals. It's part of all of our media - and thus the title of this blog post.
As written up in this article from 1-March-2015 Sunday Boston Globe, and featured in a book called, “RARE: The High-Stakes Race To Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth” by Keith Veronese, the story turns out to be one regarding sustainability.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/03/01/the-earth-rarest-metals-and-why-need-them/aYgdYQ2ZlLLB9qNmOSxXyH/story.html
As the article says,
While there’s no reliable way to gauge how much of this stuff we have left, we can at least be sure of one thing: Supplies of the elements that drive our iPads, missile systems, and Xboxes are going to run out. “It’s not going to be possible,” Veronese says, “to keep the game going forever.”
From where are these metals extracted? The richest location is China’s Bayan Obo Mining District. China’s market share for rare earth metals is 97%. This is a potentially scary scenario, since China could decide to suddenly withhold these metals for its own purposes.
Why do we discuss this in a project management blog post? Two reasons, really. First: it reinforces our idea about sustainability being not only about saving species and renewable energy. It’s about anything that is related to the long-lastingness of enterprise. And second? Well for that we need to talk about where a shortage of these minerals is leading us: outer space.
There may be mining on the moon in our lifetimes and it won’t likely stop there. Asteroids are likely to be fertile sources of these metals. Talk about a project – there’s a project! Create a mining operation on an asteroid. So it’s the rarity and potential unavailability of these key ingredients to technology that may be a driver for your next project – or perhaps the beginnings of your son’s or daughter’s career in project management!
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: March 03, 2015 12:16 AM |
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